A major concern for modern paging systems is the ever increasing customer demand for continuous, efficient, and reliable paging service. Customers typically expect their pages to be forwarded efficiently (minimal amount of delay) and reliably (no missed pages) over a paging coverage area that may sometimes span a wide geographic area.
To meet the aforementioned customer demands, and also due to the increasing structural and logistic complexities of modern paging systems, the amount of time and effort spent in performing system maintenance and diagnosing reported problems has increased significantly. For conventional paging systems, unfortunately, service personnel routinely perform many maintenance items, including diagnosing reported problems such as missed pages, by taking the entire paging system (or major portions thereof) off-line for a time interval. Since this discontinues normal paging service to the paging system's customers, incoming revenues are reduced and customers are temporarily inconvenienced.
Diagnosing paging system problems, i.e., performing paging system diagnostics, normally involves determining why pages are not being received or correctly received by one or more selective call receivers in a predetermined paging coverage area or areas. Further, these paging system diagnostics can involve monitoring specified paging system parameters and determining if tolerances of the paging system parameters are within specified limits, or if specific maintenance actions are needed. Particularly important are those paging system parameters that affect the characteristics of paging transmissions for correct reception of pages. Typically, this diagnostic process comprises a repetitive sequence: measure specified parameter(s), make any necessary adjustment or repair, and measure the parameter(s) again to verify correct operation. In known paging systems, this paging system diagnostic process is normally performed by service technicians with the paging system (or a major portion thereof) being off-line to perform the test or measurement.
For example, one particularly laborious and time consuming procedure involves testing the integrity of the paging system (e.g., was a page accepted by the paging terminal actually transmitted by the paging system and correctly received by a pager?). In one scenario, service personnel test system integrity by sending repeated test pages via the paging system to a reserved test pager, which is typically carried on the person of a service technician. The service technician then travels to many different test locations in the paging coverage area to determine the reliability of reception of the test pages. This procedure can be very time consuming. Making matters worse, this test procedure usually involves taking the conventional paging system (or a major portion thereof) off-line, because under normal on-line operation the varying incoming paging traffic loads combined with variable latencies within the paging system's internal queues can significantly reduce the efficiency of the aforementioned integrity testing procedure. Hence, this time consuming test procedure being performed with the paging system off-line can seriously inconvenience customers during testing. Furthermore, since paging system integrity testing is many times a reactive service procedure (e.g., performed in response to a customer reporting that a page was missed, and sometimes after many customers have complained of missing pages), the time spent diagnosing the problem with the paging system off-line further aggravates customers that are already aggravated by previously missed pages.
In addition, unfortunately, there may not always be a clear and direct correspondence between the successful reception of the test pages by the reserved test pager and the successful reception of the normal on-line pages by customers. Testing the paging system under relatively simplistic off-line conditions rarely replicates the actual paging system conditions during on-line operation. Therefore, testing the integrity of the paging system as described above can significantly inconvenience customers and may not always be effective in diagnosing and quickly solving the missing pages problem.
For efficient and reliable operation, many paging system parameters must also be monitored periodically to maintain the paging system operating within specified limits. These critical paging system parameters, some of which tend to vary over time, can affect the reliable transmission and reception of pages. For example, in a conventional simulcast paging system the synchronization of a plurality of paging transmitters is critical for effective communication to occur. It is necessary that the simulcast page being transmitted from the plurality of paging transmitters arrive at the paging receiver essentially at the same time from all sources. Hence, the relative delays of the different transmission paths taken by the simulcast page must be synchronized, and the synchronization maintained over time, to assure reliable reception of simulcast pages. This test procedure normally involves verifying and adjusting the relative delays of the transmission paths from the paging terminal to the plurality of transmitter basestations. Other exemplary paging system parameters that may be critical for proper system performance include the distortion of the transmitted signal from each transmitter basestation, the effective transmitted power of each paging transmitter, the frequency of the transmitted carrier signal from each paging transmitter, and any other interference or noise signals that may be present with the transmissions.
Many of these types of parametric measurements are performed by service technicians often using esoteric techniques that are applied in less than standard fashion from technician to technician, and usually with little if any assistance from the paging system equipment. This can significantly increase the time necessary for parametric system testing and can also reduce the reliability of diagnostic inference from any results. Further, these measurements are typically performed with the paging system (or a major portion thereof) being off-line, and sometimes in response to customer complaints of missed pages, which additionally frustrates customers.
Therefore, this diagnostic process determines whether a number of paging system parameters are within specified limits, and optionally adjusts the paging system parameters as necessary for maintaining proper operation. Regrettably, in conventional paging systems, the PG,5 implementation of this diagnostic process can significantly inconvenience customers and may offer marginal reliability in diagnosing the paging system problem.
Due to the extreme competition in today's marketplace, the consequences of not adapting the modern paging system to meet the ever increasing demand for continuous, efficient, and reliable paging service to customers may include loss of potential revenue due to extended periods of system down-time, loss of customer satisfaction, and ultimately loss of competitiveness leading to business failure. Moreover, in a governmental or medical paging system the loss of communication may prove grave and devastating for a community.
Thus what is needed is a more efficient and reliable paging system capable of self-diagnostic monitoring.